Dancing Politics In Anglo Culture, From Jacobite To Jacobin And Royalist To Republican

299 Pages·2017·3.6 MB·English

by  Amy Stallings

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Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects
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Amy Stallings
College of William and Mary, [email protected]
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Stallings, Amy, "Cabinet of Monkies: Dancing Politics in Anglo Culture, from Jacobite to Jacobin and
Royalist to Republican" (2016). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1477068518.
http://doi.org/10.21220/S2C30H
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Cabinet of Monkies:
Dancing Politics in Anglo Culture,
from Jacobite to Jacobin and Royalist to Republican

Amy Catherine Stallings

Newport News, VA

BA, The College of William and Mary, 2006
MA, The College of William and Mary, 2009

A Thesis presented to the Graduate Faculty
of the College of William and Mary in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

Lyon G. Tyler
Department of History

The College of William and Mary
August, 2016
© Copyright by Amy Catherine Stallings, 2016

ABSTRACT PAGE

Dance has long been known to play a significant role in the social life of colonial
British America. What historians have largely failed to note is the integral nature
of dance to the realm of politics and the formation of national identity. From the
earliest days of its dissemination in print, English country dance served a political
purpose. In 1651, under Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate government, Royalists
like John Playford used dance as a subtle form of resistance. Urging the public to
remember the monarchy fondly and join together in a quintessentially English
pastime, Playford’s English Dancing Master created an imagined community of
political dissenters. The Playford manuals set the standard for the politicization of
dance in Anglo culture, both in the politically-charged dance titles they contained
and in the intended function of dance performance itself. Ballroom politics spread
across the Atlantic to England’s North American colonies.

In the years preceding the American Revolution, as well as during the war itself,
the ballroom became a political space to a heightened degree. While minuets
established a clear social hierarchy, country dances broke it down into more
democratic forms. Codes of conduct at assemblies allowed attendees (especially
women) to publicize their political allegiances through their dress, behavior, and
dance selection. British and Americans sought to politicize the ballroom for their
advantage; spectacular fetes such as Howe's Mischianza won local populations
to the British cause, while the Philadelphia Assembly prohibited Loyalists from
subscribing to its events. Partially in response to British pomp, the Continental
Army characterized its festivities as orderly, economical, and virtuous.

In the Federal era, political rivals again used dance as a form of propaganda,
warring over the legacy of independence. International tensions ran high, with
France embroiled in a bloody revolution that sent a new wave of emigres fleeing
abroad, many to America. Pro- and anti-French feeling spilled over into the
ballroom. As the rise of the middle class rendered dance an understandable
language across a wide swath of the voting population, two major themes arose:
that of dance as a wholesome rustic activity in keeping with lauded classical
virtues, and that of the social-leveling, chaotic frolic, imbibed with vice and
dangerous Jacobin principles. An analysis of dance metaphors reveals growing
discomfort with race relations and with the political aspirations of the lower
classes, suggesting the gradual closure of the window of opportunity that
independence had proffered.

English country dance persisted into Jacksonian America, despite the rise of
French cotillions and quadrilles. Though it was a tool of reconciliation after the
War of 1812, the longways set’s association with egalitarianism made it a target
for anti-Jackson feeling by the 1820s. Changing styles in dance and politics also
undercut the role of the ballroom. Women assumed a more public role in rallies
and social movements, and small-set and partner dances allowed dancers to
self-segregate, hindering large-scale communication on the dance floor.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ii

Introduction: On the Right Foot 2

Chapter 1: “Begin the Dance” 14

Chapter 2: “The Hobbies of the Times” 27
Chapter 3: “Dance, Dance, Revolution” 68

Chapter 4: “News From America” 112

Chapter 5: “Rival Candidates” 167

Chapter 6: “Time Wheels Us Round” 205

Chapter 7: Conclusions 249

Bibliography 273

Vita 292
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There is a long list of people without whom this work would have been impossible
and an even longer one of people to whom I am greatly indebted. No one,
however, has been more instrumental, at every stage of this dissertation’s
development, than Dr. James Penn Whittenburg. Examining dance as the topic
of my master's thesis was his suggestion; he has shown me more support and
especially more patience than I could have hoped for; and but for his
encouragement, I would probably never have pursued a Master's Degree at all,
let alone a Ph.D. The opportunities for intellectual growth that he and Dr.
Carolyn Whittenburg have offered me through the National Institute of American
History and Democracy have shaped the last fourteen years of my life and will
always influence the way I study history and share it with others. The rest of my
committee—Dr. Paul Mapp, Dr. Charles McGovern, and Dr. Christopher
Hendricks—have also been more than generous in giving of their time and
energy in order to read and comment on my research, and to challenge me in
productive ways. Special thanks to Dr. Dale Hoak for his participation in the
formative stages of this project.
I will forever be grateful to the English country dance community, firstly, the
English Country Dancers of Rochester, New York, and subsequently, the
Williamsburg Heritage Dancers. They have helped me to understand the
techniques and importance of social dancing in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries by allowing me to experience these dances brought back to
life in the present.
Likewise, I owe many thanks to the Jane Austen Society of North America—
specifically, to the Western New York, Southeastern Virginia, and Central Virginia
Regions, at whose meetings I gave early versions of the papers that became this
dissertation.
My family has been endlessly supportive throughout the long ordeal of graduate
school. They think more highly of my talents than I deserve, but I hope I can
make them proud. Thanks Mom, Dad, and David for accompanying me on
research trips, actively taking an interest in my subject matter, listening to some
very long monologues about colonial dance as I worked through my findings.
And thanks to tea and ice cream for existing and being my gastronomic pillars of
strength, morning, noon, and night, and quite often in between.
Finally, I must acknowledge that my high school history teacher, Mr. Feldman,
was right after all. When I took his class at age fifteen, he predicted that I would
become a historian. I flatly denied it. In retrospect, I realize he couldn’t have
come to any other conclusion about a student who was so animated at the sight
of a portrait of Caesar Rodney. He can now say “I told you so.”
ii
All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books,
all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen
merely from a lack of skill at dancing.

~Molière, Le Bourgeoise Gentilhomme, 1670
Introduction

On the Right Foot

I ought to have recollected, that under the close inspection of two such
watchful salvages, our communication, while in repose, could not have been
easy; that the period of dancing a minuet was not the very choicest time for
conversation; but that the noise, the exercise, and the mazy confusion of a
country-dance, where the inexperienced performers were every now and then
running against each other, and compelling the other couples to stand still for
a minute at a time, besides the more regular repose afforded by the intervals of
the dance itself, gave the best possible openings for a word or two spoken in
season, and without being liable to observation.

~Sir Walter Scott, Redgauntlet, 18241

When my adviser first suggested to me that I research dance in the colonial and early
Federal periods, I’m sure I stared at him skeptically. What on earth could I expect to
learn about dance that would be worthy of a dissertation? Even if I did find something,
whom could I expect to read it? Was it possible that something I enjoyed so much—
English country dancing—could actually form the basis for a powerful historical
argument?
A longtime admirer of the works of Jane Austen, I already recognized the importance
of the dance floor in facilitating social encounters; and it was Miss Austen,
unsurprisingly, who led me toward one of my central themes. In Northanger Abbey,
published posthumously in 1818 but written during the closing years of the previous
century, Austen’s hero Henry Tilney teases heroine Catherine Morland by drawing a
parallel between dancing and marriage: “You will allow, that in both, man has the
advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal....” Catherine repeatedly objects
to the comparison, and Henry at last acknowledges some dissimilarity: “In marriage, the
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man is supposed to provide for the support of the woman; the woman to make the home
agreeable to the man; he is to purvey, and she is to smile. But in dancing, their duties are
exactly changed; the agreeableness, the compliance are expected from him, while she
furnishes the fan and the lavender water.” 2
Though Mr. Tilney speaks—as he usually does—half in jest, his notion of the
ballroom as a sphere of female power captivated me. In this unique space, women were
expected to speak to men and men to be obliging. It is, in part, Mr. Darcy’s refusal to
concede power to Elizabeth Bennet at the Meryton Assembly that establishes their
adversarial relationship in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. In the words of Dr. Jenna
Simpson, Darcy’s dismissal of Elizabeth as “not handsome enough” to dance with “[robs]
Elizabeth of her power to choose [or] refuse a partner, to make decisions for herself. [It]
robs her of social status in her territory, among her friends, where she's well-regarded and
can expect to be treated with respect, affection, even deference. He is treating it as his
territory.”3 Later in the novel, it is again in the context of a dance when Elizabeth is able
to exact a sort of revenge. Though frustrated when Mr. Darcy resists her attempts to
provoke conversation, she trades on the power structure of the ballroom to impose her
will:
They stood for some time without speaking a word; and she began to
imagine that their silence was to last through the two dances, and at first
was resolved not to break it; till suddenly, fancying that it would be the
greater punishment to her partner to oblige him to talk, she made some
slight observation on the dance. He replied, and was again silent. After a
pause of some minutes she addressed him a second time with—“It is your
turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy—I talked about the dance, and you
ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number

1 Sir Walter Scott, Redgauntlet: A Tale of the Eighteenth Century (Paris: J. Smith, 1832), 139.
2 Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, in The Complete Novels (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1981),
847.
3 Jenna Simpson, e-mail message to author, June 19, 2016.
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